ABSTRACT
Historian Shelby Foote describes the way a military leader's nonverbal behavior, in a particular instance, was misconstrued. During the Civil War, a Union general checked into the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. He struck an observer as having "no gait, no station, no manner." Rather, his aspect of "rough, light-brown whiskers, a blue eye, and rather scrubby look withal... as if he was out of office and on half pay" suggested someone who need not be taken seriously. The desk clerk assumed a superior air. When the general wrote his name in the register, "U.S. Grant... Galena, Illinois," things changed fast. The clerk rang the bell loudly, and the observer took a new look. On second glance, he "perceived that there was more to him than had been apparent before .... The 'blue eye' became a 'clear blue eye,' and the once stolid-seeming face took on 'a look of resolution, as if he could not be trifled with.'" (Foote, 1963, pp. 3-4).
